VI Conference of the Trotskyist Faction – Fourth International
Honduras and the Tendencies in Latin America
26/08/2009
In the last edition of La Verdad Obrera (True Worker) we presented some conclusions about the regional situation and the significance of the coup in Honduras as well as other events, which have been demonstrating how the bourgeoisie and imperialism are attempting to make a political turn to the right in order to confront the crisis. They are putting limits on the expansion of populism and pressuring for economic and political plans that would make the workers and people pay for the crisis, discipline the masses and form an alliance or at least reduce the amount of friction with the United States. Though there are signs of a rightwing recuperation as well as different kinds of bonapartism (that is also seen in the course of the Chavez and Evo Molraes’ governments), it is generating a greater regional polarization and resistance from the workers, farmer and the people, like we’ve seen in Honduras and Peru. It’s important to stress that the worker’s movement is showing a tendency towards greater activity, like in Venezuela or in Argentina, where the struggle against the bosses and managers is forming with an anit-bureaucratic component. There is also an awakening in the student and youth movement, as was seen recently in the struggles in Brazil and Bolivia. The political problem, that is presented in front of the advance sectors, is how to overcome the nationalism and populism of Chavez, Evo Morales, Correa, and others, who can not bring the country to national liberation, much less to a “socialism of the 21st century” from the hand of the nationalized companies; furthermore, they have shown themselves completely incapable of confronting the offensive actions of the reactionary sector and imperialism, like in Honduras. That’s why it’s important to step up the fight for an independent political organization of workers and create a transitional program that holds democracy and anti-imperialism as the main slogans, demands that the capitalists and imperialists pay for the crisis and that allows for the strengthening of the alliance between the workers, farmers and the people.